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Scalebound cancelled [Platinum Games and Kamiya have commented]

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Alienous

Member
zKNLAKB.png

Sold on lies.
 

Kyoufu

Member
Sad news, I was in the minority that thought the game looked decent. I hope Platinum Games and Kamiya can bounce back.
 

Broank

Member
That sucks big time looked like it could be good if they changed the main character.

Hope MS has some killer unannounced new IPs. Things are looking really thin for my interests especially with not much hope for a real Fable.
 
It's over, period. MS lost their last ace, and that's the end of their Xbox One hopes and dreams.

It's not hyperbole, it's not fanboy drivel. It is LITERALLY it for Xbox. MS has nothing left, nothing they can reveal tomorrow would fix the hole now created. There is no reason left for any one, hardcore or casual, to substantively invest in an Xbox.

Microsoft took away the last reason that anyone would need to own an Xbox over a PS4 (except for 4K Blu-Ray playing LOL!) and the cavalcade of tiny titles that will be nice but won't stir up any sales.

This is Microsoft's Wii U. There may be some diehard fanboys that stick around but the bell has tolled, the age of Xbox is done.
 

Euron

Member
MS will notice it, believe me. Sale numbers will talk loud and clear this 2017.
Exclusives have been mattering less than ever this gen and since when would games like Scalebound have impacted sales?

Sales will rise as the prices fall, which they will with the launch of Scorpio. More bundles with 3rd Party games and Minecraft will be made and that will be enough some months to top NPD Charts.
 

Audioboxer

Member
Ah, here's what I was looking for

XucL0OR.jpg


July 2015: "Those shits at MS...are they fucking with me?"

So, let's set a timeline HEAVY with speculation. Game was announced at E3 2014 without much notice. It skipped E3 2015, but showed up at Gamescom that year in August with an announcement of four-player co-op, which was shown off with a much rougher game in E3 2016's conference. The game was then cancelled soon after.

My guess is that, in July, Kamiya was told he had to rejigger the game into a four-player co-op thing. There were never any hints he wanted to make the game a Monster Hunter-like, but I am guessing people in charge of money were expecting him to do so. It gets announced, shown off, and the response is tepid. Changing tides at Microsoft, a desire to free up the UE4 team they put together to work with Kamiya, and being unhappy with the state of the game lead to it being cancelled.

If my guess is correct, that's really sad.

Reasonable speculation, but I doubt we'll ever know, or at least we're not going to find out straight away. As much as Kamiya is outspoken as well, he'll be under legal requirements now.
 

PR_rambo

Banned
I'm sure Phil will make things better by announcing their next big exclusive entitled: "MORE Halo."

And the year after that we will be in for a treat "EVEN MORE GEARS"
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
I mean. That sucks. But if they really were overscoped and behind schedule? I dunno. It's a real shame, I love the games that team work on.
 

Gestault

Member
The number of people I see characterize game cancellations (or some first-party studio closures) as something a company does arbitrarily or gleefully is a sign of a totally ignorant understanding of this industry. Sony has unfairly gotten flack for closing studios this generation in that exact same way, and blaming the publisher for a developer's internal challenges is totally off-base. If there were somehow a case where the publisher was obstructing development, that news would come out.

This news sucks, though.

Seems like it.

No one heard any trouble like this until now.

This is a real question and not rhetorical posturing: Did you see the most recent E3 gameplay sessions? Those fights looked rough.
 
So what is the appeal of Scorpio? 3rd Parties? Whats the point of having power if you got no games to showcase it. This is why Scorpio will do absolutely nothing to Sony and will be nothing more than an overhyped console with no games.

To be fair, a lot of what sells the ps4 is the COD, destiny, EA games which are also not exclusives. I dont think this changes much honestly.

It looked "ok" imo. Definitely not a killer app. too bad for those who were anticipating it though,
 
Multiple years later and you're surprised? Really?

To be fair we saw more of it and more recently than Crackdown 3.

If anything we only saw a concept of the amazing cloud some years ago.

Crackdown 3 is on the same level like Phantom Dust for me right now.

As long they dont show shit and give us a real release date it doesnt exist in my mind.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Mattrick was there from 2007-2013, when they went from the OG XBox and early 360 strategy that included Mech Assault, PGR, Kameo, Viva Pinata, and Lost Odyssey to going all-in on Kinect and doubling down on Halo, Gears, Forza, and Fable.

People don't realize there are usually lead times of 2-3 years from new leadership taking over until the effects are seen on the platform. Mattrick put Microsoft in a huge hole with the beginning of the XBO generation, but I also feel that many people switching to PC from 2010/2011 onwards were disillusioned 360 gamers that found the platform of stale. At least I was.

When leadership changes bring with them massive shifts in approach this is true. If there was a stable, consistent long term content plan things would be steadier through transitions. But I feel like Microsoft hasn't really had a long term plan to date on how much they want to be a content house, and there's been a lot of shorter term tactical thinking and reaction to how they do things on this front. Maybe Spencer can make a long term strategy stick here but it'll be years and years before we know.
 
So what is the appeal of Scorpio? 3rd Parties? Whats the point of having power if you got no games to showcase it. This is why Scorpio will do absolutely nothing to Sony and will be nothing more than an overhyped console with no games.

It has to be third parties, like I can't think of anything else it could be. Maybe Microsoft doesn't know either what they're doing with Scorpio.
 
You seem to be really eager to put the blame on Platinum when other publishers never canceled their games and MS has a history.
Could just as well be that MS wanted entirely different things than Kamiya, Kellams and the rest of the team.

I think most publisher just want something good but look back to the demo, seems Scalebound is not the case.
 

Giolon

Member
I thought Scalebound looked pretty lame from the beginning, but was hoping that it would end up surprising me. Oh well. I hope Platinum is doing well enough that this won't harm them too badly.
 
So, with this cancellation, should Microsoft slowly start to worry about what their E3 2017 conference contains outside of Scorpio/Halo 6? (if Crackdown makes it before then)

Sony has been killing it with all of their conferences outside of the Pro reveal which was pretty boring and disliked overall. On top of that, even if some things get leaked on Sony's side, Sony somehow still has hidden gems to be revealed while on the other hand Xbox's stuff got leaked way before hand.
 
Or maybe the game was just in development hell, as evidenced by Platinum missing deadlines, etc. You can't keep throwing money into a clearly failed project, which is why they cancelled it. Platinum not being able to deliver on the game is not Microsoft's fault and this game being a turd does not mean that Microsoft is looking for an exit, lol. Especially with a powerful new system releasing at the end of the year. Jesus, man.

If this game was the only symptom you'd maybe have a point.
 

Epcott

Member
😡 Da fuq? This was one of the only two games I really wanted for the Xbox One. Sucks I had to learn about this from the Halo Mega Blocks thread.


Wtf is up with these exclusives?
 

Detective

Member
We dont really know what happened behind the scenes so we can't judge who's fault the project got cancelled.

Hope everyone involves gets recovered.

And the game didn't look promising to begin with. Very mix feelings.
 

Proelite

Member
The track record for Microsoft working with third parties, especially Japanese, with new IPs are much worse than that of Platinum's. I am going with the reason for the failure being mismanagement form MS's side.
 
You can't discount what Platinum is today and ignore their output of shit projects listed under the flag of "worked fine" previously. They have the man power, and if they couldn't structure themselves to get it done within 4 years then they should never have taken the gig. That's all on them.

What shit projects? Yeah, Turtles and Korra weren't great, but they probably had to be made fast with a shoestring budget. It's a miracle Transformers turned out to be such a nice game when you take that into consideration. And StarFox seemed a game for which Platinum had little to no creative control.
Nier Automata plays like a dream as well, based on the demo.
 

reKon

Banned
I'm so much happier now that I'm dead. Technically missing. Soon to be presumed dead. Gone.

And this lazy oblivious and incompetent "Microsoft" company will go to prison for my murder. They took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. They took and took from me until I no longer existed. That's murder. Let the punishment fit the crime. To fake a convincing release date for Scale-fucking-bound you have to have discipline. You befriend a local foold, Platinum Games. Harvest the details of his hundrum life and cram him with stories about how development will be "doing fine", how the the game will soon be playable from start to finish. Secretly create some money troubles: forced online co-op, micotransactions, western bullshit. With the help of the unwitting, you bump up your life insurance. Purchase the Xbox One. With the Elite Controller. Generic. Overpriced. Pay cash. You need to package yourself so that people will truly mourn your loss. And I don't know how much you know about Japan, but they truly believe in honor, it's an important part of their culture... You know what's hard? Faking your excitement for this game. First, you pretend to follow all the dishearting news about this trainwerk of a game. Watch every damn E3 showing. From the first CGi vaporware trailer. Wake up at fucking 3.a.m, June 2016 just to see how this game has been resorted to a How To Train a Flying Potato simulator. Then you steal a Recore copy. And you pretend to like it. Voila! The game is nothing like you wanted. You wasted 60 dollars. Happy 3th Anniversary of this game's announcement. But then you go on NeoGAF, and post "wow I loved the E3 demo, MS is doing a great job :)" while you dry off the tears running down your face. Wait for the clueless director to announce the release date. Off he goes... and the clock is ticking. 20 weeks away from the release day and they haven't even shown final console footage yet. You feel fisically ill. A lot. A lot. A lot. You start to post about how the game is likely being saved for Scorpio How the game still retains that Hideki Kamiya-sama magic, even though you know deep in yourself that's one hell of a lie. June. E3 starts and they fucking bring a broken demo on stage. "Well, Platinum has never made a bad game, so there's no reason not to trust them". I repeat to myself. But everyone else playing the demo booths agrees that it is just bad. And because you're you, you don't stop there. You go back. To the day this fucking game was announced. Start with the fairy-tale days. The biggest Xbox One exclusive. A system seller title. From the creator of Resident Evil 2 and Bayonetta. Those are true. After that, you invent. "Scalebound was supposed to relive the Xbox brand" "X1 would likely outsell PS4 when this game gets released... at least in the US" The spending, the abuse, the fear, the threat of violence... burn it, just the right amount. Make sure the fans will find it. Finally, honor tradition with a very special treasure hunt. And if I get everything right, the world will hate Microsoft for killing his beautiful, legacy franchise. And after all the outrage, when I'm ready, I'll go out on to GameStop and buy a Playstation 4 + NieR: Automata bundle. And when my mother finds me investing my precious time trying to bond with this hot anime girl, I'll look straight into her eyes and say "but have you looked at her butt? Have your really looked at her butt?" In that very moment, she knows. She fucking knows. As she handles me the nugget pieces she previously cooked for me, she leaves my room with these words: "NierR is the true savior of Platinum Games". And that's when the people will know, Microsoft dumped Scalebound like garbage, and it floated past all the other abused, unwanted, inconvenient titles like Phantom Dust and Fable: Legends. The Scalebound fans will be gone, but then... we never really existed. We loved a game we pretended to like.

"An Xbox One exclusive".

Gamers always use that, don't they? As their defining compliment: "Quantum Break is a true Xbox exclusive". A true Xbox One exclusive is hot. A true Xbox One exclusive is game. A true Xbox One exclusive is fun. A true Xbox One exclusive never makes its fans angry. It only smiles in a chagrined, loving manner. The Platinum Game fans like what they like, so evidently they're vinyl hipsters who loves fetish Manga. If they like girls gone wild, Claire Redfield was a good example of empowering woman design. Bayonetta is sexist trash.. When I met Phil Spencer I knew he wanted "true Xbox Exclusive experience". And for him, I'll admit: Scalebound truly was it. He created an empty development funded by vapor and nothingness. Microsoft rewrote the concept to fit those Sony esclusive games everyone loves. They put headphones into the game because we all love headphones. They showed the game, semi-regularly. I lived in the moment. The same dragon portion for three years. I was fuckinging game. I can't say I didn't enjoy some of it. Microsoft teased out in me things I didn't know existed. A lightness, a humor, an ease. But I made them smarter. Sharper. I inspired them to rise to my level. I forged the company of my dreams. We were happy pretending to be other people. We were the happiest couple we knew. And what's the point of being together if you're not the happiest? But Platinum got lazy and Microsoft stubborn. They delayed the game. Microsoft actually expected me to love support their Xbox console unconditionally. And before finishing with Platinum, they delayed the game another time. From Holiday 2016, to simply "2017". We knew it was coming. We knew that what the press sneaks were telling us, was true.

You think I'd let Microsoft destroy me and end up happier than ever?

No fucking way.

They don't get to win. I don't know how much the rest of you know about social culture (I'm an expert), but grown-ups work for things. Grown-ups pay.

Grown-ups suffer consequences.

Did you come with this as the 50 pages of discussion developed? Bravo.
 
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